Insane Difficulty: Other good romhacks? - Insane Difficulty

(Originally posted in the Brave New World sub-forum, moved to General. ~Kaffe)

I love this romhack. It breathes new life into a game I love, and it's full of good game design ideas. I wonder, are there other romhacks out there that give other games this sort of treatment?

I recently started playing Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, but I'm a little upset about how experience and ability points are awarded in this game. You earn points per action, so casting a slow spell that takes out a whole crowd of enemies will earn you less points than hiding in a corner and pointlessly spamming Focus or quaffing potions. I'd love to see it changed to a more traditional system where all party members get the same number of points at the end of a battle. I'd also like to see JP Boost removed and the game balanced to not require too much grinding for casual play.

Perhaps a similar treatment could be given to Final Fantasy 2? Or at least a change so that you don't have to practice every spell individually, so Ultima can actually be good the moment you get it.

What other beloved games could use some major fixups?

A lot of your concerns about FFT's system have been addressed in my mod. I wish I could set xp by winning a battle instead of by the action, but haven't been able to figure out how to do that yet. Tying xp gains to speed (such that slower characters gain more xp) partially fixes that issue, but xp per battle would be ideal. Also gave Gain JP up to all humans innately, so that the player can use their support for something that'll help them win battles.

FF2 seems like it has so many underlying issues that it wouldn't be a good base for a mod. In the sense that you're better off modding something else or writing from scratch.

I found out that there is a website with some pretty good romhacks for other games. Here is the site. It seems like a pretty decent one.

Emmy, on 20 April 2016 - 08:10 PM, said:

Oh cool. Is this your hack? It seems to have some of the qualities you described. It'd be pretty cool if someone could figure out how to award XP at the end of battles though! I'm sure if the geniuses here could make that whole esper bank system someone should be able to figure this out.

Emmy's mod is Monster Tactics

Rynzer's FF4 Hack is here

ROTDS is fun if you like feeling like you're on crack.

MMX HT is great if you hate your hands.

New Threat has a similar difficulty to BNW afaik. It doesn't have everlasting growths (1.3 does), but it has very different characters stats wise, and the Materia system which further allows you to customize their stats at the moment.

Seriously, BNW and NT may be two very different mods with very different base games, but I'm convinced their target audience is the same.

If you're looking for other FF6 hacks, Eternal Crystals is a pretty decent one. It's more of a content mod and not so much a gameplay mod, so it's mainly just cool to see. The author kinda merged FF4 with FF5 to create that one.

There's a Japanese hack called T-Edition which adds customizable costumes for characters that unlock new abilities while changing their sprite, and it adds a quest system to NPCs. You talk to a bartender, they tell you that there's a scary monster in a cave, you go kill it, and get a reward. I have only seen videos of this one but it seems pretty rad.

FF5 for GBA has a fantastic hack that allows you to set every single one of your commands when switching jobs rather than just two. You can break the game pretty easily this way, but it's pretty damn fun.

squirrelpup, on 20 April 2016 - 07:56 PM, said:

Return of the Dark Sorceror, also on these boards is an excellent FF6 hack. The scope of BNW is a complete rebalance of the original that fixes a multitude of flaws and adds new dynamics to the game. It represents what FF6 should have been. ROTDS is a completely new game, set in the world of FF6 with different characters, new custom cut scenes, new spells and espers, new bosses, a new world map, completely revamped dialogue and graphical overhaul that makes it look more vibrant and beautiful than FF6 originally was. The difficulty of the game is much higher than BNW, but still doable.

The Golden Sun mods here do a good job of retooling the equipment of Golden Sun into a very versatile system. It also adds a decent amount of new Psynergy and the added difficulty makes Summoning a high risk/reward feature instead of an autowin feature.

I also really like the Chrono Trigger mod here, but it does not overhaul anything in the game, it is just really good.

The only Chrono Trigger mod I truly enjoy is Echoes of Eternity (the fan CoD one)...It's worth playing, but be warned: the difficulty curve is insane.

To be honest, I was a little afraid to try out stuff willy nilly from the forums here because I'm not looking for insane difficulty, or even new content really. What I'm most interested in is seeing how people can take a hard look at old games and find ways to fix their flaws and make them more fun, while keeping in the original spirit of the game. It's amazing to see how years of hindsight can be applied to improve an old game, almost as if the game never stopped being developed. I'm always grumbling about gameplay flaws and what I would change, after all, despite my love of Super Nintendo era games.

That said, Monster Tactics sounds like a fun idea, and I'll check out some of these other things too, thanks!

Hey, here's a longshot, but has anyone modified an RPG to completely remove the experience/equipment treadmill? I'd love to see a game where no equipment is definitively better than other equipment, and higher level characters are not definitively better than lower level ones. Experience points could still be used to unlock more complex abilities that could be used for greater strategery though. Closest thing I've found so far is Undertale, where you can beat the game with 0 exp without too much difficulty, and I guess "weak mode" in FF12IZJS exists, and no exp mode in BNW, but I don't think the game was intentionally designed around it. Heck, even Tactics doesn't seem to care about experience levels much compared to learned abilities, though the equipment treadmill picks up the slack. BNW equipment approaches this, but there's still a lot of stuff that obsoletes other stuff.

Btw, FF4DS actually feels like a complete re-imagining of the original game that makes all the encounters more dangerous and interesting. I don't see first-party remakes of this quality often.

The only game set like that was Saga Frontier 1 (where stat gains were "random" after battles, and battles earned you Tiers (which increased the enemies' difficulty exponentially).

Removing Exp systems would take ALOT more work than it sounds, I think; changing entire sections of code because it is so integrated.

Oh man, using more cross class abilities in FF5? I need to try that one! That's actually the thing I like most about FFT: you can use way more cross class abilities than usual. Heck, what if you could use every ability you've learned at any time? Always seems strange that you end up learning abilities and then not being able to use them unless they are equipped.

If it is FF5 MoB, then you can get 3 active abilities to choose from instead of 1 (Fight and Item are both optional now). In addition, any class you master gives you the passive abilities of said class for all of your class, not just freelancer. You can create obscene combos but the game didn't really increase in difficulty, so it is very easy.

Thunen, on 21 April 2016 - 12:25 PM, said:

I wonder how they handle two-handed? In the iOS version, equipping two-handed prevents you from equipping anything in your off hand. Also, I guess this means you can't turn off stuff like rapid-fire?

From what I remember, it works similar to BNW where you can choose to 2-hand a weapon or not. Same with Dual Wield.

Rapid Fire is an activated ability, so you have to select it in battle to use it.

Thoret, on 25 April 2016 - 03:13 AM, said:

Spam account, deleting post.

While not a difficulty mod, Breath of Fire 2 Retranslation has a custom (very catchy) intro and very engaging dialogue. I highly recommend it if you're a fan of the original or the series. The story touches on a lot of things that might have gone unnoticed (like running gags) without touching the gameplay. It's a lot of fun to read!

Secret of Evermore Gameplay Balance Patch is another keeper. Weapons and magic alchemy have shared exp, so leveling the bone slightly raises the swords before you get them, and leveling Flash will help out your fire spells. Also he made the game a lot more balanced; no more chainspells or invincible toaster dog.

FF5 Spoof is a hilarious take on the original, if you don't mind being a bit offended. For instance, Black Mages are now called "Mexicans." After the tutorial showing you how to change your job...


So there's that.

Time/SpaceMage, on 25 April 2016 - 06:43 PM, said:

it's like it's not even the same game anymore

Hart-Hunt, on 21 April 2016 - 07:34 AM, said:

You are not alone on this. Honestly, I feel that while 1.3 paved the way for this site to get a ton of hacks, these two will forever be my go-to hacks that I recommend for people.

But that's just me, I feel like 1.3 could use a bit of a scrubbing to clean it up a bit around chapter 4.